Desert Sage and Marsh Violets
by ladycordelia17
Summary: Two-shot. Sometimes the littlest things are those that inspire the most bittersweet of memories, especially for two people who deeply love each other but whom duty and ambitions divide. Rated for safety.
1. Desert Sage

_**Been a really long time since I wrote anything for the **_**Final Fantasy:**** Crystal Chronicles**_** fandom, but I'm finally hearing the voices of my brain-children and my Crystal Chronicles muses for the first time in ages. So I'm marking my triumphant return to the fandom with a two-shot. Here each of two forlorn Selkie lovers find that a certain form of plant-life reminds him/her of the other.**_

_Disclaimer: I do not own _Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles_ or any characters or locations within, only my Tipa caravanners and their kinsfolk, and the name of the Defender among Mio's angels who is patron guardian of Tipa and its caravan._

**Desert Sage**

"And if Anaïs Nin goes on an errand alone or is otherwise separated from us, I'll safeguard our gil supply from would-be thieves," Dimo Nor announced to his fellow caravanners onboard the ferry. "Doubt even the really brazen ones will cross me—I am a Lilty, after all."

The caravan from Tipa was now making its way to the Lynari Desert and the Selkic port of Leuda for the first time since the Yuke woman Khetala had become its leader. Her predecessor, Fen Del (who was Anaïs Nin's uncle on her father's side), had been killed in a fight with the Antlion that guarded Lynari's myrrh tree eight years ago, and Khetala had resolved not to bring Anaïs Nin to the place of her uncle's untimely death unless the caravan could definitely take something from Lynari, apart from a drop of myrrh, that was worth the going there. Now, however, nearly the entire caravan was certain of what it sought, thanks to the unlikeliest of sources.

Other caravans had declared the curly-haired Clavat wanderer Gurdy to be little more than a charlatan, but Khetala had patiently listened to him and recorded the cryptic lines of verse that he had spoken each time they crossed paths. Now, through brainstorming and discussion, the Tipa caravanners were able to make sense of Gurdy's poem.

_Lightning brings the cactus pain—  
><em>_Now it all begins again.  
><em>_Of crumbled inn few reminisce;  
><em>_Its faulty beams will not be missed.  
><em>_Lonely mushroom bursts to flame  
><em>_In the land that quicksands claim.  
><em>_Three rocks await the winter's kiss—  
><em>_One by one each finds its bliss.  
><em>_In the end shall bloom a flower:  
><em>_Sacred light reveals its power._

They knew that this poem referred to the long-rumored "buried treasure" of the Lynari Desert, and Khetala felt certain that she would know what to do when the caravan came across each of the landmarks of which the poem spoke.

This quest, however, necessitated stopping in the port town of Leuda to rest for a few days before the caravan took to the desert. Finding a place to rest was not difficult; Anaïs Nin had kin on her mother's side (her maternal grandfather, Boku Fen, and an uncle named Thuun Xi) who were glad to have her and the rest of the caravan as their guests. Beyond Anaïs Nin's kinsmen, however, the caravanners felt distrustful of the rest of Leuda's denizens; the villagers, it was reputed, loved to pick the pockets of visitors to the island who were not Selkies. For this reason they had formulated a plan for safeguarding the caravan's gil and other valuables long before setting foot on Leuda's dock, in case Anaïs Nin's presence as a caravanner was not enough to deter potential pickpockets from targeting the others.

The caravanners and their Leudan hosts feasted well that first night, eating a dinner of crustaceans, artichokes, and a Fummish spice-cake that Lydia had brought out of the wagon as a token of thanks for Boku Fen and Thuun Xi's hospitality. Thuun Xi even shared with the caravanners a drink that he had been thus far trying to perfect: "Know those big bluish-leaved plants that grow just north of here?" he asked the Tipa caravan. When Khetala and David nodded but Dimo Nor cocked his head to the side in a confused manner, Thuun Xi went on, "Well, we call them _ga-vei zurei_—Old Selkic for 'blue gem of the desert'—and those plants have a mighty sweet heart on them. What I do is I harvest those hearts when they get nice and big, and I press all the sweet juice out of them. I throw in some bread-yeast and let the juice sit for a week or two, then once the juice has fermented for a while, I run it in batches through this contraption I traded-for from a visiting Yuke some five years ago—I believe he called it a 'distiller.' What I get is this cloudy but flavorful drink—bitter, so you don't want to drink a lot of it at a time—but I've had visitors say it's kind of like the 'whiskey' they make in Fum, but made with _ga-vei zurei_ instead of round corn."

"In other words, it's also similar to the 'strange liquid' that the Shellans peddle," David explained in reply before taking his first sip.

"Then if it's anything like Fummish whiskey, it does funny things to the mind of anyone who isn't a Yuke if you drink a lot of it at once—so you may wish to be careful with it," Khetala admonished as she caught a glimpse of Dimo Nor about to drain his entire cup in one gulp.

In the end, however, it was not Dimo Nor who underestimated the strength of Thuun Xi's experimental concoction, but Anaïs Nin. After three smallish cups of the drink, the lavender-haired Selkie noticed that her head was starting to feel funny and excused herself to make her way to the freshwater drinking-spring west of Boku Fen's tent for some water.

The moon shone full that night, so under any other circumstances Anaïs Nin should have had no trouble finding her way to the spring. Inebriated as she was, however, she strayed from the path and wandered north, led by a pleasant scent that found its way under her nose. She stopped in a great open patch where sage plants grew—but this desert strain of sage had a different smell than the kind to which she was accustomed. To Anaïs Nin's nose it was earthier and somewhat less tangy than the sage that farmers and herbalists in Tipa cultivated—but it was familiar all the same. Where had she smelled it before?

She sank to the sandy ground, clutching at the sage plants and nuzzling the leaves with her face to release their earthy fragrance—and as the chill desert night-wind blew across the ground and stirred the sands, she remembered. Winters in the northern part of the continent were downright brutal for peninsula dwellers—Anaïs Nin learned this fact the hard way when the Tipa caravan had, after claiming one drop of myrrh, been confined to Shella until winter melted into spring. Her greatest solace had been in the company of a Selkie youth named De Nam, an ambitious alchemist who hailed from Leuda and wished to find a means of freeing the world's four races from dependence upon the miasma-repelling crystals. So many times that winter had they found comfort in each other's arms amid the heartless cold…

De Nam. The desert sage reminded her of De Nam.

The two of them had shared stories, banter, and heated debate that frigid season, embraces and even kisses, but they had not gone so far as to make love during the time that they were together (as much as curious-best-friend Lydia was hoping that Anaïs Nin would be able to confide such an outcome in her). Some part of her had wanted that outcome as much as he did, but Anaïs Nin's sense of duty was too strong to allow it. Now, with the intoxicating scent of desert sage filling her nose and memories filling her thoughts, she couldn't help but wonder what kind of pleasurable memory might have come into being had she and De Nam given in to their desires.

"_Anaïs Nin? Anaïs Nin, where are you?"_

Lydia's worried voice jerked Anaïs Nin out of her trance-like nostalgic state moments before her Clavat friend hurriedly approached. "For Théodred's sake, Anaïs Nin, you've had too much of that stuff your uncle treated us to, haven't you?" she asked with some surprise. "You never made it to the drinking-water spring after all."

"I'm sorry. I just got distracted and sidetracked, is all," Anaïs Nin apologized, embarrassed and somehow far more distraught than she should have been.

Lydia handed Anaïs Nin a ladle and set a bucket of water down before her, from which she gratefully drank. "Just what was that plant you were so drawn to?" she sympathetically inquired. "It must've had some kind of really nice smell, which has to be why you were rubbing your face in it…"

"Desert sage," the wistful Selkie explained. "Like the sage grown at home, but…I don't know…earthier than I'm used to sage being…I caught the scent, and it reminded me of Shella."

"You miss De Nam that much, don't you?" Lydia acknowledged, divining her friend's meaning at once.

Anaïs Nin nodded, wiping a tear from her cheek. "I wish I could go and see him again, you know? Normally I couldn't imagine being anything but a caravanner, but this is one of those times when I wish I wasn't."

"You know as well as I do, Anaïs Nin, that we'll make that miracle somehow," Lydia reminded her. "Khetala keeps saying we'll be the ones who bring about the Great Revival. We'll rid this world of miasma, or if we don't, De Nam will find his means of adapting to it. In the meantime, though, we both need to go back—the others are worried about you." All caravanners worried when an even-slightly-inebriated comrade wandered off without explanation, of course, lest that person wander too far and die of miasma poisoning without even being aware of his or her own peril.

"I suppose you're right. Just remind me to gather up some of the sage before we board the ferry bound for the mainland again." With that, the two women slowly made their way back to the caravan's wagon beside Boku Fen's tent, Anaïs Nin hoping that by morning she would be more clear-headed.

_A/N: For Thuun Xi's "experimental" concoction, I have described an incomplete form of the process of making tequila. After discussing Yukish "strange liquid" on my since-destroyed forum and seeing a continuation, per se, of the discussion by others on a forum owned by my fellow Crystal Chronicles writer SasukeBlade, I like to think that certain people have experimented to "invent" forms of liquor known to the real world for the enjoyment of Crystal Chronicles denizens. In this case, the Selkies, being desert-dwellers in the time of my caravan, would be the inventors of tequila or something close to it._


	2. Marsh Violets

_A/N: As hard on me emotionally as "Desert Sage" was, this chapter, "Marsh Violets" was even harder. Then again, my stories **The Demon Sends His Messengers** and **Sorrow and Doubt** made me cry a lot as I wrote them too, probably for the same reason. Chronologically, this chapter takes place two-and-a-half years after the Tipa caravan's visit to Leuda and five or six months before the events of the two aforementioned Conall Curach-centered tearjerkers._

**Marsh Violets**

Spring crept slowly over a world covered in poisonous miasma, like the slow lightening of the sky just before the sun rose. With it came a bounty of color that breathed life into the desolate world: the gorse trees of the Alfitarian highlands wore bright golden petals, and the willows over the Fummish plains carried flowers of palest pink. Crocuses and daffodils blossomed all over the miasma-clouded world, and magnolia blooms abounded on trees in Tipa and just to its north. Soon these gave way to tulips and dandelions, clover blossoms and lacy white wild blooms.

But none of those inspired bittersweet reminiscence like the marsh violets that bloomed in the dank of Conall Curach.

De Nam gulped down the contents of his water-cup, forcing his body not to rebel at the taint of miasma only through tremendous strength of will. He had been drinking the marsh-water for two months now in an effort to acclimate himself to the miasma in the air, and the effort had thus far done little more than give him two months of constant pain. He knew that he was decidedly paler and thinner than when he first arrived in the marsh, and when the native monster-life occasionally wounded him in battle, his wounds took thrice as long to heal as before.

When he made his way west of camp in the afternoon to hunt small game for an evening meal, he discovered, to his dismay, that another hell-plant had taken root in the grassy field next to the creek. A quick Fire spell and several racket-strikes dispatched the overgrown miasma-borne weed easily enough, but De Nam could not so easily defeat his own irritation. Hell-plants liked cold better than warmth—why were they still so prevalent in this part of the marsh despite the fact that it was much closer to summer now than when he first came to Conall Curach seven months ago?

For the past several days, De Nam bristled with anger whenever he had to fight a hell-plant, especially when those weeds invaded the places where the marsh violets now bloomed. He wasn't entirely sure of the reason why he had suddenly become so protective of those unusually-shaped little wildflowers, but maybe it was because they reminded him of the love from which his research mission, and her duty as a crystal caravanner, divided him.

He had been studying magic in the Yuke citadel of Shella when he met Anaïs Nin, the lone Selkie aboard the motley Tipa caravan. The caravanners had just collected a drop of myrrh from the tree at Veo Lu Sluice near midwinter when an impending snowstorm forced them to make haste toward Shella before the sun set, and Anaïs Nin, dirt-stained from battle, could not bear waiting to bathe until she and the rest of the caravan were at an inn. Instead, she made her way toward a secluded bather's cove of which the locals had spoken, located on the eastern edge of the island, taking a Fire magicite with her to warm the water. De Nam's Shella cottage lay just a short distance away from the cove, and he, on his way home from the grocer, had bumped into Anaïs Nin just as she emerged from the cove cleaned-up and dressed in fresh traveling clothes.

During the time that the Tipa caravan had bunked into Shella for the winter, De Nam and Anaïs Nin had grown quite close to one another. He told of his research into the nature of miasma and his ambition either to rid the world of miasma or to find a way for the four races to adapt to it; she told stories of the Tipa caravan's myrrh-gathering adventures; both discussed their lives before his coming to Shella and her joining the caravan. When the time came for Tipa's caravan to depart from Shella, both Selkies regretted that Anaïs Nin's duty as a caravanner obliged them to part ways, but De Nam promised to write to her, and to every letter he wrote, she replied in kind.

Maybe Anaïs Nin didn't believe in love at first sight as De Nam did, but it was clear from her letters that she missed his company and longed for the day that the two would reunite. He missed her, too, and now, more than ever, he had to rely on his memories of her to buoy him in this painful time.

Now that the marsh violets bloomed in Conall Curach, De Nam found that these little flowers did, in fact, remind him of Anaïs Nin. Their shape was like no other blossom of any season, just as no maiden, even another Selkie, was like his beloved Anaïs Nin. The petals of pale purple felt just like her skin, smooth except for the hands callused from years of fighting with a racket, and were the exact same color as her silky shoulder-length lavender hair. He supposed that if he could smell the flowers, their fragrance, too, would remind him of her scent. As it was, however, either the violets of Conall Curach had no scent to speak of (unlike the violets that bloomed on both sides of the Jegon River), or this deadened sense of smell was just one of the many ways in which the miasma, and his effort to adapt, was damaging his health.

But even memories of Anaïs Nin had stopped having the invigorating effect that they once had—De Nam no longer felt his heart lighten when he remembered her smile, her melodious voice, the sparkle in her silver eyes like sunlight on the sea. He no longer felt himself grow warm when he remembered the way she would snuggle close to him beside the fire, or when he imagined her smooth skin rippling beneath his loving touch. He would once dream almost nightly of her smiling warmly at him, whispering sweet endearments as she caressed him in ways that both soothed and inflamed. Now, however, his dreams were mostly nightmares, some of them even more painful than his waking loneliness.

There, out in the forsaken land known to the Selkies as the marsh of dead dreams, only the marsh-violets that bloomed in spring saw the tears of a young man who sometimes found himself questioning whether or not he was even alive anymore.


End file.
